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When someone close to you dies, the memories and recollections of them are painful. It isn't until the fifth stage of grief that the memories of them stop hurting as much; when the recollections become positive. When you stop thinking about the person's death, and remember all of the wonderful things about their life.
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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You have entered an abnormal, lonely, and unwelcome new world where you are nothing but an island of sadness.
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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Birth is not a beginning and death is not an ending. They are merely points on a continuum.
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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Someone experiencing the stages of grief is rarely aware of how his behavior might appear to others. Grief often produces a “zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.
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Sol Luckman (Snooze: A Story of Awakening)
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And death has a cruel way of giving regrets more attention than they deserve. The
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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I wasn’t showing what I really felt. Real grief is ugly and uncomfortable. People look away from grief the same way they look away from severed limbs or gaping wounds. What they want is pain like death on a stage: beautiful, bloodless, presented for their entertainment
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Sarah Rees Brennan (Tell the Wind and Fire)
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We do things hopefully because they add life to our living, but not with the illusion they will help us escape death when our time comes.
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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And yet I know that in her death, she has found the freedom she could not find in life. She is no longer confined to a room, a bed, and a body that no longer works.
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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The will to save a life is not the power to stop a death.
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David Kessler (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
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Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
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Tomorrow and tomorrow come creeping in and always will. We're fools trapped in a mechanism of our own unconscious making. Shadows strutting and fretting for one brief hour upon a stage, then heard no more. I'll weep an ocean in my heart, if the world would give me time. But not now.
”
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David Hewson (Macbeth)
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Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he id watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved - so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why?
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Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)
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A loved one’s death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I’ll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don’t want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don’t want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.
”
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
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Grief doesn’t hit us in tidy phases and stages, nor is it something that we forget and move on from; it is an individual process that has a momentum of its own, and the work involves finding ways of coping with our fear and pain, and also adjusting to this new version of ourselves, our “new normal.
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Julia Samuel (Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving)
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Understand there’s no right or wrong way to grieve, including anticipatory grief. It’s like the ocean. It ebbs and it flows. There can be moments of calm. But out of nowhere, it can feel like you're drowning.
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Dana Arcuri (Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark)
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You can’t be like me But be happy that you can’t I see pain but I don’t feel it I am like the old Tin Man. —THE AVETT BROTHERS, “TIN MAN” ACCORDING TO ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS, THERE ARE FIVE stages of grief a person passes through after the death of a loved one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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She realized that for the dying butterflies were a symbol of transformation, not of death, but of life continuing, no matter what. Although your relationship with your loved one will change after death, it will also continue, no matter what. The challenge will be to make it a meaningful one.
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
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At that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes.
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Thomas Hughes (Tom Brown's Schooldays (Tom Brown, #1))
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Poor Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: so misunderstood. She is widely credited with identifying the five stages of grief. She didn’t. Kübler-Ross worked with dying people, not grieving people. She identified clear phases people go through when they are dying not as stages but as emotional experiences that come and go and may overlap.
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Sallie Tisdale (Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying)
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There are stages we all go through when dealing with character deaths. Grief. Anger. Denial. Laughter. Coulson.
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Jack Lewis Baillot
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Ultimately, meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after their death while you’re moving forward with your life. That
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
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The Staging
In the weeks after my mother's death, I sleep
Four or five hours a night, often interrupted
By dreams, and take two or three naps a day.
It seems like enough. I can survive if I keep
This sleep schedule as it has been constructed
For me. But if it seems my reflexes are delayed,
Or if I sway when I walk, or weep or do not weep,
Please don't worry. I'm not under destruction.
My grief has cast me in a lethargic cabaret.
So pay the cover charge and take your seat.
This mourning has become a relentless production
And I've got seventy-eight roles to play.
”
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Sherman Alexie (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
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According to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, when we are dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinctive stages of grief. We go into denial because the loss is so unthinkable, we can’t imagine it’s true. We become angry with everyone. We become angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. Then we bargain, we beg, we plead. We offer everything we have. We offer up our souls in exchange for just one more day. When the bargaining has failed and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair. Until finally we have to accept that we have done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance.
…
In medical school we have a hundred classes that teach us how to fight off death and not one lesson on how to go on living.
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Meredith Grey
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And he had begun to feel then what he was feeling now: the complex and awful mental and physical interaction that is the beginning of acceptance, and the only counterpart to that feeling is rape.
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Stephen King ('Salem's Lot)
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I’m not sure why I had to weather the stages of grief after hearing the news that night. Maybe it was the death of my singledom or the death of my own childhood that scared me. For some reason, when you’re faced with the realization that you’re going to become a parent, it immediately changes how you view yourself. You no longer think of yourself as someone else’s child because you can’t be a parent and a child. It’s an official good-bye, and good-byes always scared the hell out of me.
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Renee Carlino (Sweet Little Thing (Sweet Thing, #1.5))
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If you are working with a therapist counselor social worker grief expert minister priest or anyone else who is trying to help you navigate the wilderness of grief and they start talking about the groundbreaking observations of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross suggesting there is an orderly predictable unfolding of grief please please please. Do yourself a favor. Leave. People who are dying often experience five stages of grief: denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance. They are grieving their impending death. This is what Elizabeth Kubler Ross observed. People who are learning to live with the death of a beloved have a different process. It isn’t the same. It isn’t orderly. It isn’t predictable. Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable
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Tom Zuba (Permission to Mourn: A New Way to Do Grief)
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In death's quiet theater,
love takes the stage,
A poignant script,
written on sorrow's page.
Elegance fades as we part with the light,
In shadows, the dear departed's absence feels trite.
Grief's somber dance, a waltz of the heart,
Echoes reveal, love's masterpiece torn apart.
”
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Saurabh T
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Kübler-Ross wrote that she regretted writing the stages the way that she did, that people mistook them as being both linear and universal. The stages of grief were not meant to tell anyone what to feel and when exactly they should feel it. They were not meant to dictate whether you are doing your grief “correctly” or not. Her stages, whether applied to the dying or those left living, were meant to normalize and validate what someone might experience in the swirl of insanity that is loss and death and grief. They were meant to give comfort, not create a cage.
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Megan Devine (It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand)
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Pippa came over to the table and placed some paintbrushes in front of us. “So, what are we talking about over here?” she asked. “Death,” I told her. The crease that this word caused in Pippa’s forehead made me certain that she needed to go on a few away-day courses about how to deal with the dead and the dying. Because she’s not going to last long working at the hospital if she can’t even bear to hear the word. Pippa crouched down beside the table and picked up one of the brushes. “It’s a very big topic,” Pippa said eventually. “It’s okay,” I said. “I spent a whole day doing that seven stages of grief thing, and I got over it all in one go.
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Marianne Cronin (The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot)
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Oh, well. I'll just tell her you seem to have survived it," she said.
Roger said, "Honestly, Ann-Marie!" as if surviving a loved one's death were somehow reprehensible. But the odd thing was, right at that moment I realized that I had survived it. I pictured Ann-Marie's friend waking up this morning, the first full day of her life without her husband, and I thanked heaven that I was past that stage myself. Even though I still felt a constant ache, I seemed unknowingly to have traveled a little distance away from that first unbearable pain.
I sat up straighter and drew a deep breath, and it was then that I began to believe that I really might make my way through this.
”
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Anne Tyler (The Beginner's Goodbye)
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Three postcards await our perusal, yea, three visions of a world.
One: I see a theme park where there are lots of rides, but there is nobody who can control them and nobody who knows how the rides end. Grief counseling, however, is included in the price of admission.
Two: I see an accident. An explosion of some kind inhabited by happenstantial life forms. A milk spill gone bacterial, only with more flame. It has no meaning or purpose or master. It simply is.
Three: I see a stage, a world where every scene is crafted. Where men act out their lives within a tapestry, where meaning and beauty exist, where right and wrong are more than imagined constructs. There is evil. There is darkness. There is the Winter of tragedy, every life ending, churned back into the soil. But the tragedy leads to Spring. The story does not end in frozen death. The fields are sown in grief. The harvest will be reaped in joy. I see a Master's painting. I listen to a Master's prose. When darkness falls on me, when I stand on my corner of the stage and hear my cue, when I know my final scene has come and I must exit, I will go into the ground like corn, waiting for the Son.
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N.D. Wilson (Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World)
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Imagine going a long time without seeing someone you love. Then after months or years getting the moment to see them and catch up. I think that's what death is like. Going a long time and missing them a lot, more and more each day. No matter how many years go by you miss them just as much as the first day they left. I miss my mom. Its been years. Its easier to manage but I miss her more and more. But I often think of the moment we will meet again and catch up again. In living life going a long time not seeing someone is tough then catching up right where you left off BUT imagine in death how powerful the feeling to see them again must be. Death is getting the chance to catch up and see them again. Experiencing the butterflies and that special high that is felt all over your body. Do not fear death. Embrace it as you do life. In life, love hard! Life moves fast. For when your time comes you have a chance to love hard again and catch up with those that left, those you've missed and those that missed you. Someone is there counting the days to seeing you again. Some you may not expect or some you've missed just as much. Don't fear what you think you're leaving behind. Don't fear at all. For what you leave is temporary, the living will too join you as you wait for them. And, that moment to catch up is worth the wait. You will pick up right where you left off as if time did not pass.
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Jill Telford
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Shortly after the Gulf War in 1992 I happened to visit a July Fourth worship service at a certain megachurch. At center stage in this auditorium stood a large cross next to an equally large American flag. The congregation sang some praise choruses mixed with such patriotic hymns as “God Bless America.” The climax of the service centered on a video of a well-known Christian military general giving a patriotic speech about how God has blessed America and blessed its military troops, as evidenced by the speedy and almost “casualty-free” victory “he gave us” in the Gulf War (Iraqi deaths apparently weren’t counted as “casualties” worthy of notice). Triumphant military music played in the background as he spoke.
The video closed with a scene of a silhouette of three crosses on a hill with an American flag waving in the background. Majestic, patriotic music now thundered. Suddenly, four fighter jets appeared on the horizon, flew over the crosses, and then split apart. As they roared over the camera, the words “God Bless America” appeared on the screen in front of the crosses.
The congregation responded with roaring applause, catcalls, and a standing ovation. I saw several people wiping tears from their eyes. Indeed, as I remained frozen in my seat, I grew teary-eyed as well - but for entirely different reasons. I was struck with horrified grief.
Thoughts raced through my mind: How could the cross and the sword have been so thoroughly fused without anyone seeming to notice? How could Jesus’ self-sacrificial death be linked with flying killing machines? How could Calvary be associated with bombs and missiles? How could Jesus’ people applaud tragic violence, regardless of why it happened and regardless of how they might benefit from its outcome? How could the kingdom of God be reduced to this sort of violent, nationalistic tribalism? Has the church progressed at all since the Crusades?
Indeed, I wondered how this tribalistic, militaristic, religious celebration was any different from the one I had recently witnessed on television carried out by Taliban Muslims raising their guns as they joyfully praised Allah for the victories they believed “he had given them” in Afghanistan?
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Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
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In the Kübler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The model is supposed to apply to most major losses. Stuff like death, breakups, dealing with your parents’ divorce, overcoming addiction. In general, it works. But for Haruka, and she imagines most others like her, the smart ones, the brave ones, there is another stage: revenge.
That’s not the same as anger, revenge. No. Anger is a much simpler concept. An easy emotion to tap into. Primitive. It’s rooted in the limbic system, the amygdala. A banging of the fists and stomping of the feet and overall feeling of “I’m mad!” Anger can be reduced to an emoji, or several with slight variations. Although, they’re usually a little too cute for what’s at the core of that actual emotion, anger. It can be very scary when witnessed.
Revenge is more complicated. More sophisticated. It’s also less scary-looking, almost clinical when carried out. It would take at least two distinct emojis to express properly. More like three. Something to depict a wrongdoing, something to show contemplation, then lastly the victim committing an evil act with a calm, satisfied smile.
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A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
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He then made the connection between Jim’s death and the compulsion he felt to commit the robberies. Once he became aware of his feelings and the role the original event had played in driving his compulsion, the man was able to stop re-enacting this tragic incident. What was the connection between the robberies and the Vietnam experience? By staging the robberies, the man was re-creating the fire-fight that had resulted in the death of his friend (as well as the rest of his platoon). By provoking the police to join in the re-enactment, the vet had orchestrated the cast of characters needed to play the role of the Viet Cong. He did not want to hurt anyone, so he used his fingers instead of a gun. He then brought the situation to a climax and was able to elicit the help he needed to heal his psychic wounds. That act enabled him to resolve his anguish, grief, and guilt about his buddy’s violent death and the horrors of war.
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Peter A. Levine
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The very first relationship of our life is with our parents. It’s the most deeply ingrained relationship in our minds. They act as a confidant, supporter, and an anchor for a majority of our lifetime. The death of my mother felt like the death of warmth, love, and nurture. Initially, it won’t make much sense, but eventually, as you go through different emotional stages, you start making sense of what has happened and the way you want to move on.
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Cortez Ranieri (Grief Of A Parent And Loss: Navigating And Coping With Grief After The Death Of A Parent (Grief and Loss Book 3))
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The Lottery by Stewart Stafford
It was New York, 1984,
The AIDS tsunami roared in,
Friends, old overnight, no more,
Breathless, I went for a check-up.
A freezing winter's dawn,
A solitary figure before me,
What we called a drag queen,
White heels trembled in the cold.
"Hi, are you here to get tested?"
Gum chewed, brown eyes stared.
This was not my type of person,
I turned heel and walked away.
At month's end, a crippling flu,
The grey testing centre called,
Two hundred people ahead of me;
A waking nightmare all too real.
I gave up and turned to leave,
But a familiar voice called out:
"Hey, you there, come back!"
I stopped and turned around.
The drag queen stood there in furs,
But sicker, I didn't recognise them,
"Stand with me in the line, honey."
"Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again."
"Support an old broad before she faints?"
A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp.
I got in line to impatient murmurs:
"If anyone has a problem, see me!"
Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir.
My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch,
(After the Ted Bundy female survivor)
Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez.
After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me,
Writing down their number on some paper,
With their alias not their real name on it:
"Is this the number of where you work?"
"THAT is my home number to call me on.
THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!"
"I was wrong about you, Carol," I said.
"Baby, it takes time to get to know me!"
A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left.
A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking,
Spartan results, a young man's death sentence.
Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered.
Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol.
The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds,
Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?"
"That person is dead." They hung up on me.
All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol,
Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel?
I still keep that old phone number forty years on,
Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet.
© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
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do the five stages of grief only apply to the death of a loved one? Could it not also apply to the death of an aspect of your life?
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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I am Death Walker, Grief Bringer, Daughter of Carnage. I have walked through fields of blood, nimbly stepping over corpses the way a dancer steps onto a stage. I am the Queen of War, knee deep in fallen life, up to elbows in warm failing flesh. The slip of intestine against my fingers, the feel of once strong hands gripping at me, begging me to save them.
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Gea Haff (Anne Brontë: Nightwalker (A Brontë Blood Chronicle))
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A demigod who reaches his apotheosis never mourns for himself.
It is the business of his many adulators to mourn for him. He cannot feel sadness to be so great, leaving all the rest of us to champion in trembling misery.
I, surprisingly, have very few words to offer, only because this year has taken so many sensational performers from us. There comes a time when the agony of loss is too great, when we feel it too much-- there is nothing left but painful astonishment. My grievances lie more with the Gods for taking him away from us than they do with his parting. I suppose I shall reach the stage of unconscionable sorrow at some point; now I am half confusion and half indignation. It should be impossible for people to be so deeply affected by someone whom we have never formally met, but this is existence: it is a bold measure we take, this stake in sufferance; we must all go through everything together, another proof of the mask of division. We all feel the same things, and Prince's passing is felt no less by anybody. Between him and Bowie, there is now a musical chasm in the world, a place where Gods once dwelt that is now abandoned, and in the Age of Pseudolotry, where what is nonsensical reigns over what is intelligent, we are likely never to see one of his kind again.
Goodnight, sweet Prince. We shall go on trundling through this 'thing called life' with hearts defrauded of our greatest love.
--On the death of Prince
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Michelle Franklin
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Grief, but also serenity. A wife who had accepted her husband’s death as a natural stage of his life, not the conclusion of it. “But
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Diane Ryan (Talking To Luke: Haunting Gets Personal. (TTL Series Book 1))
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When someone close to you dies, the memories of them are painful. It isn’t until the fifth stage of grief that the memories of them stop hurting as much—when the recollections become positive. When you stop thinking about the person’s death and remember all of the wonderful things about their life.
”
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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We will never get over the death of someone we love, but we can learn to live with it. We can learn to connect with our lost loved ones in new ways, we can free ourselves of anxiety, and we can open ourselves up to the world again.
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Claire Bidwell Smith (Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief: A Revolutionary Approach to Understanding and Healing the Impact of Loss)
“
talk to other parents who are broken and bitter and feel robbed at the loss of a child. They want to know why I wasn’t destroyed by Jim’s death. I tell them that his life had meaning even though it was so short, and perhaps he wasn’t meant to be here any longer. Being with him when he died was a gift, and I’ve learned to trust in God, his sovereignty, and his faithfulness. I
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
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Death forces change. It’s the final stage of growth for the one who is dying and it is a teacher that forces the growth of the one who remains.
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Kate McGahan (Only Gone From Your Sight: Jack McAfghan's Little Therapy Guide to Pet Loss and Grief (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Series Book 4))
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Ultimately, meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after their death while you’re moving forward with your life.
”
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David Kessler (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief)
“
We need to re-meet it – the grief – at every stage. As life moves, we need to introduce ourselves again to our traumas, to work out how the empty spaces, the losses, fit in. It’s like rearranging the furniture whenever you move house. Things that once matched, suddenly look all wrong. A modular couch that once sat in the living room doesn’t work in its new configuration.
And I am discovering now all the endless ways to grieve. The long tail of grief. Not just in the missing of the person but in all these new ways for the grief to hit you. The closing of gaps. The outliving of birthdays. Death is not a finite event. It is unending. Unrelenting.
”
”
Natasha Sholl (Found, Wanting)
“
Grieving is the process of emotionally navigating a loss. Navigating the loss of a dream is where grief can come as a surprise. It’s possible to grieve something you never had. This is what so many people grieving the loss of a loved one are experiencing. The loss of a loved one’s presence is devastating, but grief returns in waves as time brings reminders of things that should have happened for that one who is gone. A parent who loses a child also loses the opportunity to visit colleges with that child. A wife who loses her husband loses the partner who was supposed to be there to help make daunting decisions. And that’s what is important to understand about grief: There are stages, and walking through those stages isn’t only important, it’s necessary. And unfortunately, unavoidable. Prince Harry of England was interviewed in 2017 on Bryony Gordon’s Mad World podcast. He shared that at the age of twenty-eight he finally faced his grief over his mother’s death, sixteen years after she’d been gone. For years he thought he could avoid grief, but he couldn’t. He had to walk through it. There isn’t any way to get around grief. There’s only walking through, and even then it’s not about coming out on the other side unscathed. It’s about coming out a changed person. The stages of grief are real. Knowing what the phases are doesn’t prevent hurt, and getting through them doesn’t mean you forget. But understanding that the phases are legitimate and identifying your own stage in the process can help you feel a little less crazy. A lot of my own clutter is directly linked to denial. I have to fight against living in denial. If something is unpleasant or stressful, I’ll purposely deny it. Ignore it. If I think an e-mail is going to say something I don’t want to hear, I put off opening it. But
”
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Dana K. White (Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff)
“
You may also be angry with yourself that you couldn’t stop it from happening. Not that you had the power, but you had the will. The will to save a life is not the power to stop a death.
”
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
“
Life is unfair. Death is unfair.
”
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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)
“
Birth is a beginning and death a destination; But life is a journey. A going, a growing from stage to stage: From childhood to maturity and youth to old age; From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing; From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps, to wisdom. From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and often back again. From health to sickness and back, we pray, to health again; From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion From grief to understanding, from fear to faith; From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead: We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way, But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage. . . .
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Steve Leder (The Beauty of What Remains: How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift)
“
My father's voice may have grown quieter, as Lynn said it would, but I can see now that he actually left me something after all. He left me these little plucks of wisdom that spring forth when I need them most, and his perfectionist's insistence on finding the perfect tone for every song. He left me the twitch, that sudden jolt of my muscles when I see someone else on a stage, or when I realize my hands have been idle for too long. And he left me the yearning I get in the deepest fold of midnight when the rest of the world is sleeping, when the dark is too quiet or the air is too still, and something begins to strum in my gut.
So maybe he didn't fail. Maybe neither of us did.
”
”
Sarah Nicole Smetana (The Midnights)
“
In the Kübler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The model is supposed to apply to most major losses. Stuff like death, breakups, dealing with your parents’ divorce, overcoming addiction. In general, it works. But for Haruka, and she imagines most others like her, the smart ones, the brave ones, there is another stage: revenge.
That’s not the same as anger, revenge. No. Anger is a much simpler concept. An easy emotion to tap into. Primitive. It’s rooted in the limbic system, the amygdala. A banging of the fists and stomping of the feet and overall feeling of “I’m mad!” Anger can be reduced to an emoji, or several with slight variations. Although, they’re usually a little too cute for what’s at the core of that actual emotion, anger. It can be very scary when witnessed.
Revenge is more complicated. More sophisticated. It’s also less scary-looking, almost clinical when carried out. It would take at least two distinct emojis to express properly. More like three. Something to depict a wrongdoing, something to show contemplation, then lastly the victim committing an evil act with a calm, satisfied smile.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
“
In the Kübler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The model is supposed to apply to most major losses. Stuff like death, breakups, dealing with your parents’ divorce, overcoming addiction. In general, it works. But for Haruka, and she imagines most others like her, the smart ones, the brave ones, there is another stage: revenge.
That’s not the same as anger, revenge. No. Anger is a much simpler concept. An easy emotion to tap into. Primitive. It’s rooted in the limbic system, the amygdala. A banging of the fists and stomping of the feet and overall feeling of ‘I’m mad!’ Anger can be reduced to an emoji, or several with slight variations. Although, they’re usually a little too cute for what’s at the core of that actual emotion, anger. It can be very scary when witnessed.
Revenge is more complicated. More sophisticated. It’s also less scary-looking, almost clinical when carried out. It would take at least two distinct emojis to express properly. More like three. Something to depict a wrongdoing, something to show contemplation, then lastly the victim committing an evil act with a calm, satisfied smile.
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A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
“
There is no right or wrong way to experience grief. Everyone is different. There can be interruptions and delays, depending on how we cope. In addition, we may bounce between denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, there's no rhyme or reason for
the order or the length of time.
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”
Dana Arcuri (Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark)
“
I began an expedition called Grief. An alternate route along my sacred wandering. A detour with tears and troubles. On this voyage, I sensed God warning me, “Buckle up! It's going to be a bumpy ride.
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Dana Arcuri (Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark)
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I figured it out,” he repeats. “It’s grief. The five stages of death, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, but we’re all trapped in the first two stages. The whole country, or maybe the Earth. We’re in denial and we’re pissed, because something we love is dead, except, for half the country, what they’re grieving is the past they think they’ve lost, and the other half is mourning the progress they thought they’d made, but everyone feels the same way. Like someone they love is dead. And I get it. I’m grieving too. I miss her and I don’t want her to be dead, and I’m pissed.
”
”
Noah Hawley (Anthem)
“
The five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many experience these stages usually after the death of someone they love. For me, love means everything, and I am proud to say that I have finally reached the stage of acceptance.
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N.M. Lambert (The Five Stages)